The Complete Polly and the Wolf [Hardcover]

When Catherine Storr’s daughter was very small, she was afraid of the wolf under her bed, so every night her mother would tell her a story in which Polly outwitted the wolf. These bedtime stories eventually became the collectionClever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, a wonderfully thrilling and reassuring series of adventures in which the clever, independent, and unstoppable Polly fools the persistent, hungry young wolf time and again. In a match much like Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner but more polite and quick-witted, Polly and the wolf develop ever-more complicated ways of turning the tables on each other as they grow older and, in Polly’s case at least, wiser. Three more collections of stories followed the originalClever Polly, all hilariously inventive variations on a much loved theme, and all of the stories are collected here for the first time. The stories...empower girls and underdogs, and extol brains over brawn. —Martha V. Parravano

I can’t think of much children’s literature that offers as much simultaneous pleasure to parent and child as the Polly and the wolf stories. Rereading them, I marveled, roared with laughter, was moved by the wolf’s eternal hopefulness. The stories are also exceptionally well-written. What’s more, they provide the comforting lesson that calm intelligence will triumph over silly rapaciousness every time. It’s no exaggeration to say that Storr’s wolf is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.  —Elizabeth McCracken

This agility in the storytelling keeps the book from being just frightening, just comic, or just a cautionary tale...60 years later it still reads like a feminist reworking ofLittle Red Riding Hood. The book even includes a story called 'Little Polly Riding Hood,' in which it turns out that the wolf has read the tale and mistaken it for a how-to guide for catching juicy little girls to eat. This story also has a charlóå